Chapter 2
The name hit the bathroom like a gunshot.
Elizabeth Monroe.
Not Emma.
Not the soft little lie I had worn for three years.
My real name.
The name Liam promised never to say unless we were alone and safe.
But he had just spoken it with the kind of fear that made the room tilt.
I pressed one hand to my stomach.
“What does Alessandro have to do with my real name?”
Liam’s mouth opened.
Closed.
He looked toward the hallway like someone might already be listening.
“We need to go.”
“No.”
“Emma.”
“Don’t call me that if you’re about to lie to me.”
His face tightened.
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“You recognized the envelope.”
Anyone could recognize the Vitali crest from newspapers.
But that was not what I saw on Liam’s face.
I saw memory.
I saw guilt.
I saw a door he had kept locked finally breaking open.
“How?” I demanded.
Liam bent down and picked up the broken pieces of his coffee mug with shaking hands.
He was stalling.
I knew him too well.
Or I thought I did.
“Liam.”
He stopped.
“My father worked for the Vitalis,” he said.
The bathroom went quiet.
I stared at him.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You told me your father was a union driver.”
“He was.”
“For the Vitalis?”
Liam swallowed.
“For a company they owned.”
My knees weakened.
I grabbed the counter.
“You knew?”
“I knew enough to stay away from them.”
“And you never told me?”
“You were grieving. You were hunted. You needed somewhere safe.”
Safe.
The word almost made me laugh.
Because I was standing in a bathroom holding a pregnancy test, learning the one person I trusted had hidden the one connection that could destroy me.
“My father was investigating Vitali shell companies before he died,” I said. “You knew that too?”
Liam’s eyes filled.
“I suspected.”
The room spun.
The old memory came back sharp.
Rain on asphalt.
Police lights.
My mother screaming.
My father’s car wrapped around a concrete pillar.
The official report said he fell asleep at the wheel.
But my father never drove tired.
And three days after the funeral, I found a flash drive taped beneath his desk drawer.
Bank records.
Property transfers.
The name Vitali appeared again and again.
Then the man with scarred knuckles found me outside my nursing class.
“Little girls who dig graves,” he said, “usually end up in them.”
I stopped using Elizabeth after that.
Liam helped me vanish.
He found me work.
Gave me a room.
Told me we would figure it out when life calmed down.
But life had never calmed down.
It had only waited.
“Did Alessandro kill my father?” I whispered.
Liam’s face changed.
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t no.”
“He was not head of the family then.”
“But he is now.”
“Yes.”
My stomach rolled again.
I sat on the edge of the tub.
The test lay in my palm like a tiny sentence.
Pregnant.
By a man whose family might have destroyed mine.
Liam crouched in front of me.
“Listen to me. You cannot tell him.”
I looked at him.
“He has a right to know.”
“He has armies of lawyers, guards, investigators. The second his people run your name, they’ll know who you are.”
“Maybe he already knows.”
“He doesn’t.”
“How do you know?”
Liam looked away.
That was the wrong thing to do.
My heartbeat slowed.
“What did you do?”
He stood.
“Pack a bag.”
“What did you do, Liam?”
He turned on me suddenly.
“I kept you alive.”
The words echoed.
I flinched.
Not because he shouted.
Because something under his voice sounded possessive.
Like my life was a thing he had stored, managed, controlled.
I stood too.
“You don’t get to decide everything for me.”
“You would be dead without me.”
“I know.”
The words came out cold.
“And I have thanked you for that every day. But gratitude is not ownership.”
His eyes flashed.
Then softened too quickly.
“I’m sorry.”
I moved past him.
He caught my arm.
I froze.
His grip loosened immediately.
“Emma.”
“Let go.”
He did.
I walked to my room and pulled my old anatomy textbook from the shelf.
My hands shook as I opened it.
The flash drive my father left me was still taped inside the back cover.
I had not looked at it in years.
Too afraid.
Too tired.
Too alone.
Liam stood in the doorway.
His eyes went to the book.
“You kept it.”
“Of course I kept it.”
“You told me you threw it away.”
“I lied.”
His face hardened.
“For your own safety, you should have.”
A cold line traveled down my spine.
“What is on this that scares you so much?”
“You don’t understand the people involved.”
“Then explain.”
He ran a hand through his hair.
“My father disappeared six months after your father died.”
I stared at him.
“You told me he left.”
“That was easier.”
“For who?”
“For both of us.”
“No. For you.”
He looked wounded.
Good.
I wanted him wounded.
I wanted someone besides me to feel the floor breaking.
Liam stepped into the room.
“My father had copies of files. He thought your father gave them to him for protection. He tried to sell them back to the wrong people.”
“To the Vitalis?”
“To someone using their name.”
That made me pause.
“What does that mean?”
“There were people inside the organization. Not necessarily Alessandro.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you were already terrified.”
I held up the flash drive.
“And now?”
“Now you’re pregnant by him.”
The words landed hard.
I sank onto the bed.
My free hand moved to my stomach again.
Six weeks.
A life so small I could not feel it.
A secret already surrounded by lies.
Liam sat beside me.
Too close.
“I can take care of you,” he said softly.
I looked at him.
“I always have.”
Something in his tone made my skin prickle.
“What does that mean?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded paper.
“I was going to wait.”
My throat tightened.
“What is that?”
He opened it.
A lease agreement.
Two names.
Liam Carter.
Emma Reeves.
Not Elizabeth Monroe.
Not my real name.
A different city.
Denver.
Start date tomorrow.
I stared at it.
“You planned this?”
“I knew we might need to leave fast.”
“You signed my name?”
His jaw flexed.
“It’s not your real name anyway.”
I stood so fast the paper fell.
“You signed my name?”
“I was helping.”
“You were deciding.”
He rose too.
“I love you.”
The words were not new.
Not exactly.
They had lived in the corners of our friendship for years.
But he had never said them like that before.
Not while I was pregnant.
Not while holding a false lease with my false name.
My chest tightened.
“Liam.”
“No. Listen. I loved you before you became Emma. Before Vitali. Before all of this. I was there when you had nothing.”
“I know.”
“He spent one night with you.”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“Then what is it about?”
“The truth.”
His face twisted.
“The truth will get you killed.”
The doorbell rang.
Both of us froze.
One sharp chime through the apartment.
Then another.
Liam moved to the window and looked down.
His face drained.
“Who is it?” I whispered.
He turned back slowly.
At that same moment, my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
I answered before Liam could stop me.
A deep voice came through.
“Emma.”
My knees nearly gave out.
Alessandro.
He sounded calm.
Too calm.
“I need you to open the door,” he said.
Liam shook his head violently.
I pressed the phone tighter to my ear.
“How did you find me?”
A pause.
Then Alessandro said, “Because the envelope you kept was not the only thing I left with you.”
I looked at the cream envelope on the floor.
My hand moved to my stomach.
May you like
Outside, the doorbell rang again.
And Alessandro Vitali said softly, “Please, Elizabeth. We need to talk before Liam finishes what his father started.”
